


say wait and i'll wait (it's already too late)

by MulaSaWala



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angsty Schmoop, Episode: s05e13 Return 0, F/F, Gen, Harold can do Heroic Sacrifices too John, M/M, Root is Alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8357578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MulaSaWala/pseuds/MulaSaWala
Summary: At first, John screams. He hasn't done that in a while, his throat isn't used to it. but he screams. Wait.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Root was shot, but only injured, so she's alive.

At first, John screams. He hasn't done that in a while, his throat isn't used to it. but he screams. The vault is large and well-lit, but the walls close in around him. He feels like he's suffocating.

 

Wait, he'd said. Wait. The first time, he hadn't been able to say the word, but now that he had, it hadn't seemed to matter. He feels cheated.

 

When his voice is gone, he shoots at the door. Bullets ricochet off the metal, and some of the shrapnel grazes him, but John doesn't care. Eventually, he runs out of bullets.

 

John never really knows when it becomes too late. He's not exactly wired that way, a part of him always hopes even when it hurts. But he knows it's over when the door to the vault opens. He doesn't bother getting up. There's nothing for him outside.

 

\---

 

Shaw and Fusco fish him out of there just before the police arrive. With everything going to shit, securing a bank isn't their top priority.

For the nth time, Shaw is thankful that her feelings are muted, and that she can't grieve the way other people do. like John does. She's handled a lot of people in shock, she knows what that looks like. This isn't it.

 

\---

 

Root doesn't expect to wake up, but she does. The hospital is white and smells the way hospitals do, antiseptic and sickness. Sameen is at her bedside, reading one of those awful magazines that seem to breed and multiply in waiting rooms. John and Harold aren't there, so she assumes the worst.

When Shaw tells her what happened (Samaritan is dead, and the Machine ready to be rebuilt, but it feels like a Pyrrhic victory), Root wonders whether Harold had always been so selfish. Didn't he know that guard dogs died without their owners?

 

\---

 

Fusco hugs his son too tight when he comes home. Lee is a cop's kid, and a good one, so he doesn't say anything. He just hugs back hard. What's happened to him sounds like something out of a movie, when Fusco remembers the details. He remembers something Simmons said, that everyone around him kept dying, but somehow he's still alive.

Fusco checks on his son more times than he'd like to admit that night. If Lee noticed, he doesn't mention it over breakfast.

 

\---

 

Will Ingram thinks that he's doomed to never really know the most important people in his life. After years of no contact, his Uncle Harold is gone. It's like losing his father all over again.

People from Universal Heritage Insurance come; in fact, everyone here seems to be from work. Will knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his Uncle doesn't-- _didn't_ have family of his own. No brothers or sisters, not even a distant cousin to give him another nephew or niece. All of his money was going to Will, and to Doctors Without Borders; Will doesn't care right now.

At the edge of the crowd, he sees a group that doesn't seem to belong, although they're wearing the same formal black clothes. They seem sadder than everyone else, even the dog at their feet.

Will walks towards them as soon as the coffin is covered (It's empty, Uncle Harold had donated everything to medicine and science), but he some of his Uncle's co-workers get in his way ( _condolences, condolences_ ), and when he looks again, they're gone.

 

\---

 

About a week after Root has rebuilt the Machine (an open system now, Harold wouldn't have approved), John asks Her what Harold's final moments were like. He's been staying at the Library, no more Samaritan agents to keep him away. The subway was probably safer, but there were more memories here. Donuts and Sencha Green Tea, Bear with a new toy squeaking away. John even has his earpiece on, phone in his pocket. The suite he wore to the funeral of Harold Wren is a wrinkled mess and probably smells offensive by now, but it's the one from Italy ( _"A sartorial success, Mr. Reese."_ ), so John keeps it on.

 

"--an you hear me, John. I promised never to lie to you, and I won't start now"

 

Harold's voice comes in through the earpiece. John falls off the sofa Shaw Fusco had provided, and it has almost nothing to do with being drunk.

 

"I want to tell you I'm sorry, but I'm not, really. It was always going to be me." John wants to throw the earpiece away, crush his phone beneath his feet, but it's like he's back at the vault. He can't move.

 

Harold's voice goes on. "I was focused for so long on saving people, saving the numbers, saving the world," He says, "That I almost forgot. Saving one person, if it's the right person, it's enough."

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Watched the finale again. Why do I do this to myself? WHY?
> 
> Title is from a musical called Next to Normal. It's really good, and it's on youtube

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [a light in the dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14633262) by [MulaSaWala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MulaSaWala/pseuds/MulaSaWala)




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